Cyril and Frank sat silently side by side for some time. Cyril was crying.
‘When I open my eyes, I’m back on that country lane. Blue sky above, tarmac below and no sign of Phil.’
50. One month later
His mother’s room had a new occupant now. He walked past and noticed the display shelf outside her old door was covered in ornaments and photographs. The ornaments included some curious ceramic representations of half-rotten pieces of fruit with cheeky mice poking out of them. He imagined how amused his mother would have been to see these grisly tableaux of decay constantly reminding residents that not everything was evergreen.
He eventually found Irene’s room. The door was open and she sat on a floral-print chair just inside with her hat and coat already on.
‘Am I late?’
‘No, dear. I just like to be ready.’
He wondered how long she’d been sitting there clutching her handbag waiting for him to arrive.
They took a detour on the way to the church. It ended up being more of a detour than originally intended as Irene’s directions were based on the road layout she remembered from the mid-fifties. Every now and again they’d come to a dual carriageway or a flyover and Irene would emit a small ‘oh’ and Frank would realize that another U-turn was necessary. She wanted to show him the area where she had lived when first married to Phil, the same area that Elsie and Michael and Phil had grown up together. She looked out from the car window at the vast Golden Cross estate.
‘I don’t recognize anything. It’s all gone.’
‘It can’t all have gone. There’s always something.’
Eventually after much reversing out of one-way streets and double circuits of roundabouts they came across the back of an old Victorian school.
‘I think that might have been where Phil and Mikey went to school.’
They drove up the side of it and emerged onto a major dual carriageway that Frank recognized. He saw a bench on the far side of the road. He realized that this was where Michael’s body had been found. He said nothing to Irene and they carried on to the church.
There were more people at the service than he’d expected. He recognized Azad and the women from Greggs, but there were another fifteen or so faces he didn’t know. He found out later that the women from Greggs had gone to some effort to track down Elsie’s old friends and spread the word amongst the few neighbours who had known Michael. He led Irene to a seat near the front and sat beside her.
The police had never found any next of kin for Michael. Eventually they advised the coroner’s office to release the body for a local-authority funeral. When Jo rang Frank to let him know, he asked if he could pay for the funeral instead.
The service was simple. Frank’s only request was that something other than the twenty-third psalm form the main reading. There were no hymns, but Azad chose a Nat King Cole track to play at the end of the service. The melody tugged at Frank. He didn’t know the song, something about a boy ‘a little shy, and sad of eye’. It seemed corny and haunting at the same time.
Michael was finally buried alongside Elsie five months after he died. The cemetery sprawled over an incline overlooking the M6 motorway and a fine mist of rain fell. It was hard to imagine a bleaker setting. The vicar said a few more words and some of the mourners threw handfuls of soil on top of the wooden casket.
A woman from the hospice where Elsie died came and spoke to Frank afterwards. She told him of the day some months earlier when Michael had turned up with a large brown envelope. She seemed to assume that Frank knew all about it. She said the new family room had been built now and she had wanted to invite Michael to a small event marking its opening. She said they would always be grateful for his great generosity. His name was on a plaque at the entrance. As she walked away, Azad approached Frank. ‘It was good of you to do this for Mike.’
Frank shook his head. ‘I didn’t do anything.’
‘Yeah, you did: you asked around, you found the people who knew him, you let people know that he’d gone.’
Frank looked at the graves stretching away from them in all directions. ‘That’s my speciality — things that have gone.’
‘It’s good to remember. People forget without meaning to.’
‘But they’re not really my memories. I only met Michael once for a few seconds.’
‘Yeah, but you gave people a chance to remember. It’s like my wife. She remembers everything — dates, places, faces. I forget our anniversary every year. I see the card waiting for me on the table and can’t believe it’s happened again. I don’t want to forget it; it means a lot to me. She says it’s okay, says she’ll remember for both of us.’
Frank smiled. ‘She’s a nicer person than me. My wife never remembers our anniversary. I enjoy making her feel bad about it all year.’ The other mourners had moved away from the graveside now. A council worker hovered nearby beside a small mechanical earth mover. ‘I meant to say I liked the song you chose.’
Azad smiled. ‘ “The greatest thing you’ll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return” — I thought Mike would have liked that.’
51
The new producer was younger than Martin had been. His name was Benedict and he told Frank to call him Ben. He wore narrow black-framed rectangular glasses to which his eyes seemed attached. Throughout their meeting Frank had to try to fight the impression that when the glasses came off so did the eyes. He found the image of a blank expanse of skin above the nose stuck in his mind and proved quite unsettling. Ben apologized for not formally sitting down with Frank earlier but explained that he wanted to watch the team in action for a few weeks before speaking to individual members.
‘So, Frank, I notice that the jokes appear to have dried up.’
‘Erm … yes. There haven’t been any for a few weeks.’
‘The viewers aren’t very happy about this. Quite a few have got in contact and we’ve actually already noticed a drop in viewing figures. Apparently your bon mots used to brighten up the day for many viewers.’
Frank had known this was coming. ‘I’m sorry. It’s just that the man who used to write the jokes …’
Ben looked at Frank; his eyes seemed to fill their tight black frames. ‘A man? Someone used to write those jokes for you?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’d always assumed … well, I mean they seemed so … ad-libbed.’
‘Oh no, they were scripted by a professional.’
‘Right.’
‘Anyway, he’s retired, I’m afraid.’
Frank had received a short note from Cyril. He wrote that he’d decided he needed looking after for a while, something his sister had apparently been saying for the past few years, and so he had gone to live with her and her family in Bootle. He said he would be writing exclusively for his two young nephews from now on. He asked Frank if he had been to the police and gave his new address in case they needed it. He ended the note with a one-word apology, and Frank wasn’t sure what it was for: his part in Phil’s death, burdening Frank with the information or withdrawing his puns and one-liners.
Ben was nodding. ‘I see. Are you planning on providing your own jokes?’
Frank shook his head. ‘I don’t think I’d be able to do that. It takes — well, a special kind of mindset to find the humour in every situation.’